Soy Milk and the Homosexual Agenda

I have horrific and mutilatory childhood memories. They involve cereal. And milk. And attempting to use soy milk like regular milk.

God, soy milk was horrible. At least at age ten I felt mutilated and disgusted and betrayed and horrified. Soy “milk”. Gah. A fake! A fraud! A phoney! A faux-milk loathsome substitute lurking in milk cartons, posing as good honest cows’ milk. Corruption and foulness! Disgust and deception! The thought made me squirm.

When I was about … ten, I think, I can to this day still recall various far-flung Conservative family members whispering. They whispered in furtive tones of both the Homosexual Agenda, and the Vegetarian Agenda, in equal, nose-wrinkling measure.

At that age I’d heard of neither. But various loved ones insisted they were horrible. (Or at least, individuals who my mum claimed were loved ones (and looking back now, I doubt she loved these rellies but didn’t feel it’d go well to “make a fuss” about her concerns, and yup I use that phrase deliberately)). These alleged Loved Ones stamping their disapproval upon both Agendas surely counted for something, right? Right?

Apparently this horrid disgusting fake soy crap was this Vegetarian/Homosexual Agenda hard at work, infiltrating our childrens’ bedrooms, corrupting, gangrening, polluting. I couldn’t see any problem myself. In fact, I deemed these infiltrations kinda awesome. My only reference point was Father Christmas or Santa Claus or Sergeant Spacedicks or whatever the hell he’s called these days. What’s the problem? That sounds amazing! Bring on the Agendas!

But … 10yo-me didn’t much relish these distant rellies’ vibes. Or the rellies themselves. They smelled of cigarettes and whiskey. They all wore thick horn-rimmed glasses and stinky cardigans, and played snooker in dark pubs, and were so fat they waddled, and listened to horse racing radio, and attempting long sentences made them out of breath, let alone long walks …

… But, if they shared my entirely reasonable and correct incandescent loathing of soy milk and this Vegetarian Agenda, they couldn’t be all bad, right? Right?

Fast forward to my early teens. Teens-me discovered there’s a Thing called “Gay”. Turns out some of my friends have this Gay. My first reaction was this same squirmy loathing produced by soy milk.

I could not for the life of me figure out why. Half a dozen of my childhood friends turned out to have some Gay. They’d been cool cats whilst small children and remain cool cats as teens. Why this revulsion? Where’s it coming from?

Then I chatted more with some of them. I learned more about recent decades of historical gayness, I learned of the word “Agenda”.

I was astonished to discover Gay and Homosexual meant the same thing. And this fired off a whole bunch o’ childhood memories.

And I was enlightened.

(Incidentally, I read a interview some years back of the former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark: at age seven, she had a similar unsettling epiphany upon discovering that “chooks”, those adorable birds which cluck and lay eggs and scratch the ground for insects and are your dear friends, were the same things as “chickens”, the glad-wrapped meat in polystyrene containers from the supermarket.)